Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana: Scroll Paintings of the Padmasali Purana, 1625–2000
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Manuscript Studies Volume 4 Issue 1 Article 6 2019 Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana: Scroll Paintings of the Padmasali Purana, 1625–2000 Anais Da Fonseca School of Oriental and African Studies Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims Part of the Asian Art and Architecture Commons, Asian History Commons, and the South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Da Fonseca, Anais (2019) "Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana: Scroll Paintings of the Padmasali Purana, 1625–2000," Manuscript Studies: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol4/iss1/6 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol4/iss1/6 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana: Scroll Paintings of the Padmasali Purana, 1625–2000 Abstract In the Southern Indian state of Telangana, itinerant storytellers narrate genealogies of the local castes using a scroll painting on cloth as a visual aid to their performance. These scrolls are the only archive of these otherwise oral narratives; hence key markers of their evolution. Once a scroll commission has been decided, performers bring an old scroll to the painters and request for a ‘copy.’ Considered as such by both performers and painters, a closer look at several scrolls of the same narrative highlights a certain degree of alteration. This paper focuses on the Padmasali Purana that narrate the origin of the weavers’ caste of Telangana. On the basis of five painted scrolls of this same narrative, ranging from 1625 to 2000, this article explores the nature and degree of modification undergone by the narrative. In so doing, it questions the extant of the concept of replication within the narrative and painting traditions. While performers decide for changes in the overall organisation and iconography of the narrative, painters are responsible for the materiality, technique and style of the scroll. In illustrating each of these aspects, this article argues that changes reflect the social and cultural environment of the communities involved in the production, presentation and reception of these scrolls, i.e. painters, performers and patrons, and that variations but also fixity ot be speaking for the necessities of the communities. Finally, it argues that through reproductions over the course of time, aspects of the visual narrative have become conventions while others are repeatedly revised. Keywords Manuscript studies, India, Painted scrolls, Caste puranas, Genealogies, Replication This article is available in Manuscript Studies: https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol4/iss1/6 Da Fonseca: Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana M ANUSCRIPT STUDIES A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies volume 4, number 1 (Spring 2019) Manuscript Studies (issn 2381- 5329) is published semiannually by the University of Pennsylvania Press Published by ScholarlyCommons, 2019 1 Manuscript Studies, Vol. 4 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 6 MANUSCRIPT STUDIES volume 4, number 1 (Spring 2019) ISSN 2381- 5329 Copyright © 2019 University of Pennsylvania Libraries and University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved. Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 1910⒋ Printed in the U.S.A. on acid- ee paper. 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Postmaster: send address changes to Penn Press Journals, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 1910⒋ Visit Manuscript Studies on the web at mss.pennpress.org. https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol4/iss1/6 2 Da Fonseca: Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana M ANUSCRIPT STUDIES A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies volume 4, number 1 Articles In the Age of Non- Mechanical Reproduction: Manuscript Variation in Early- Modern South Asia Arthur Dudney, Neeraja Poddar 1 Manuscript Variations of Dabistā n- i Maz–ā hib and Writing Histories of Religion in Mughal India Sudev Sheth 19 Power Permutations in Early Hindi Manuscripts: Who Asks the Questions and Who Gives the Answers, Rāmānand or Kabīr? Heide Pauwels 42 T e Strange Af erlife of Vidyāpati Ṭhākura (ca. 1350–1450 CE): Anthological Manuscripts, Linguistic Confusion, and Religious Appropriation Christopher L. Diamond 72 Prefatory Notes on Persian Idioms of Islamic Jurisprudence: Reasoning and Procedures of Law- Making in Premodern Islamicate India Naveen Kanalu 93 Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana: Scroll Paintings of the Padmasali Purana, 1625–2000 Anais Da Fonseca 112 Nectar or Arrow: Cases of Missense Textual Mutations in Early Kabīrian Padas ZhanG Minyu 134 Published by ScholarlyCommons, 2019 3 Manuscript Studies, Vol. 4 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 6 iv | Journal for Manuscript Studies “Publishing” and Publics in a World Without Print: Vernacular Manuscripts in Early Modern India Tyler Williams 146 Reviews Kay Davenport. T e Bar Books: Manuscripts Illuminated for Renaud de Bar, Bishop of Metz (1303–1316). Richard A. Leson 169 Mat i Peikola, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Hanna Salmi, Mari- Liisa Varila, and Janne Skaf ari, eds. Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts. Lydia YaitsKy Kertz 173 Alpo Honkapohja. Alchemy, Medicine, and Commercial Book Production: A Codicological and Linguistic Study of the Voigts- Sloane Manuscript Group. Winston BlacK 176 List of Manuscripts Cited 183 https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol4/iss1/6 4 Da Fonseca: Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana Replication and Innovation in the Folk Narratives of Telangana: Scroll Paintings of the Padmasali Purana, 1625–2000 Anais Da Fonseca School of Oriental and Af ican Studies n the southern Indian region of Telangana, itinerant storytellers narrate genealogies of the local low castes using a hand- painted scroll on Icloth as a visual aid to their performance. These scrolls are made of a thick canvas cloth, measure around ten meters, and are presented to a vil- lage audience including the patron who commissioned the performance. Because these performances are slowly declining and have not been system- atically recorded, the scroll is a valuable source of information, the only archive and tangible means to reconstitute the otherwise oral narratives of these communities; hence, they are key markers of their evolution.1 1 Scroll painting for performances in Telangana was fi rst brought to light in 1963 with a publication by S. Welch, R. Ettinghausen, and J. Mittal, “Portfolio,” Marg, A Magazine of the Arts 16 (1963): 7–2⒉ Jagdish Mittal, “The Painted Scrolls of the Deccani Picture Show- men: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century,” in Picture Showmen: Insights into the Narrative Tradition in Indian Art, ed. Jyotindra Jain (Mumbai: Marg Publications on behalf of National Centre for the Performing Arts, 1998), 56–65; Jagdish Mittal, Deccani Scroll Paintings in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art (Hyderabad: Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, 2014); and Kirtana Thanhgavelu, “The Painted Puranas of Telangana: A Study of a Scroll Painting Tradition in South India,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1998, constitute the bulk of scholarship on the subject. Following the revival initia- Published by ScholarlyCommons, 2019 5 Manuscript Studies, Vol. 4 [2019], Iss. 1,